Modi meets PM, set to talk to Delhi students

New Delhi: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will speak at a leading Delhi University college on Wednesday.

He will address students and the faculty of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), which has produced a string of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including Arun Jaitley, Vijay Goel, Jagdish Mukhi and Vijay Jolly.

"Modi will speak around 4 pm as part of our Business Conclave 2013", SRCC principal P.C. Jain told IANS.

Modi's talk will be on Emerging Business Models in the Global Scenario.

Earlier in the day, after a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Modi said that it was a good meeting that lasted for a quite a while.

"It was a good meeting. We spoke for quite a while on various issues," Modi told reporters after meeting the prime minister at his 7 Race Course Road residence.

He said he gave the prime minister a memorandum on issues related to the Sardar Sarovar dam.

Modi, who landed here in the morning, reached the prime minister's residence around 10 a.m.

Officials said the visit was a courtesy call.

His visit to the college will, however, see protests in the campus by at least one Leftist student group.

Durgesh Tripathi of the All India Students Federation (AISF) said its members will demonstrate outside the college.

Tripathi told IANS that it was wrong for SRCC, reputed to be one of the best colleges in Asia in commerce, to invite Modi who was chief minister during the 2002 Gujarat communal riots.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls due in 2014, there is growing clamour in the BJP that Narendra Modi should be named the prime ministerial candidate.

Among the leaders who have openly come out in his support are Ram Jethmalani, Yashwant Sinha, C.P. Thakur and Shatrughan Sinha.

Another party colleague Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said Modi was one of its eight leaders who could become the prime ministerial candidate.

The SRCC was founded in 1920 as Commercial School and was initially located in Old Delhi. It became the Commercial College, and got affiliated to Delhi University in 1926.

It was named the SRCC, after industrialist Lala Shri Ram, in 1952.

The Gujarat chief minister is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce.

A protest has been planned outside the college Wednesday afternoon against Modi's visit to the university. "Do not legitimise the mastermind of Gujarat genocide in our academic spaces," said an SMS asking students to gather in the North Campus.